Inevitably there are several ways to respond to climate change. Orienting the United States to “green” lifestyles while the rest of the world continues to produce and consume is inane. Planting trees is one of the most sensible and effective means of generating oxygen while countering rising carbon dioxide levels, thus delivering a green new deal.

Simple, yet it involves positive action our elected federal representatives can take for our future.

Allow me to take an excerpt from Daily Signal: “According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis…about 2,300 farms, or about .15 percent of the 1.6 million farms receiving direct payments in 2011, reported all their land as ‘fallow,’ that is, producers did not plant any crops of any type on this land—for each year of the last five years (i.e. 2007 through 2011), as allowed under the farm bill.”

The article goes on: “In addition, according to our analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, 622 farms reported all of their farm’s acreage as fallow for each of the previous 10 years, from 2002 through 2011.”

This means the government pays farmers to leave land lying vacant for five years or more. Our country has more than enough acreage producing food crops to feed America and other nations, so why not put fallow land to good use—fighting climate change? Trees could be well on their way to maturity in a five-year span.

Anne Schechinger, in an article published online for Ag Mag on November 7, 2017, wrote: “During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the federal government planted 220 million trees to stop the blowing soil that devastated the Great Plains. Now, just when drought and dust storms are on their way back, this “Great Wall of Trees” is crumbling – and federal farm policy is partly to blame.

A new investigation by the Food & Environment Reporting Network and the Weather Channel found that throughout Nebraska, farmers are tearing out trees to eke out a few more acres of land to plant row crops like corn and soybeans, which receive federal subsidies. These so-called shelter-belts were critical to alleviating the conditions that created the Dust Bowl and have helped stop them from coming back.

-Tree shelter-belts help farmers adapt to drought conditions by reducing soil erosion and keeping moisture in the soil. But instead of planting more trees or adapting to changing climate conditions through other conservation practices like planting cover crops, farmers are doing the exact opposite.

The federal crop insurance program is partly to blame for farmers not implementing adaptation practices. As Environmental Working Group (EWG) reported this year, crop insurance encourages farmers to ignore climate change and continue to plant the same crops in the same way, year after year, regardless of more frequent droughts. Crop insurance also makes destroying shelter-belts easier: If there’s a crop yield or price loss, farmers receive payments on the acres that were formerly used as shelter-belts.

Climate change is making farming harder in the Great Plains and it’s only going to get worse in the future. Government policies should be encouraging farmers to adapt to changing conditions, such as motivating farmers to keep and plant more shelter-belts, instead of helping them tear trees down.”

The true green new deal solution is to encourage your representatives to enact legislation that compensates farmers and land owners for planting trees rather than leaving land lying fallow.

I have heard arguments that planting trees means a lot more work when a farmer wants to reclaim the land for production of crops. They must remove the trees, which involves cutting them down and probably making money selling them for lumber or firewood. They also must pull the stumps and re-work the land to make it arable. The other side of the argument involves saving the planet by planting trees instead of leaving the land fallow, possibly for generations in the hopes it will one day be needed…when it’s needed now to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!

While that once fallow land sprouts beautiful trees, carbon dioxide is removed from the air and life-giving oxygen is generated. One acre of mature trees generates enough oxygen for 18 people. If only one million acres lying fallow became forests of mature trees, 18 million people would have more oxygen to say nothing of the reduced carbon dioxide.

Care to search for how many acres lie fallow on our planet? Be prepared for a surprise. Planting trees on fallow land sounds like a green new deal to me! Write or call your elected federal representatives if you agree.